About the Data
Trust the guidance. Verify the source. Safer Catch translates authoritative fish-consumption advisories into plain language — here is exactly how, and where the limits are.
Safer Catch does not issue advisories. It is an educational translation layer built to make official information easier to find and use. Official state, tribal, and federal advisories — and your healthcare provider — always govern.
Coverage and currency
What Safer Catch holds today, stated precisely — not what it aims to hold.
Structured advisory records
Safer Catch holds 1,000 normalized advisory records covering one state. These are the records searched when you look up a species and water. Coverage is uneven by design — it grows as source guides are processed.
National coverage, all 50 states
Outside the structured record set, Safer Catch identifies the responsible state, Tribal, or federal agency for the water you name, retrieves that agency's own advisory page, and reports what the document says. When the guidance can't be read from the source, no guidance is shown.
Currency
The most recent guide or sample year in the structured record set is 2026. Each record carries the year supplied by its source; where a record is older than the agency's current advisory, the agency's advisory governs.
Where advisory information comes from
Fish-consumption advisories are issued by state health and environmental agencies, tribal authorities, and federal agencies such as the U.S. EPA and FDA. Safer Catch does not issue advisories and does not collect fish-tissue samples. Every advisory shown here originates from one of these authoritative sources.
How Safer Catch translates it
Source advisories arrive in many formats — PDFs, tables, maps, and narrative guidance. We normalize them into a consistent structure (waterbody, species, size, population group, recommended meal frequency, contaminant of concern) and render that in plain language with a simple lower / moderate / higher-concern signal. The original recommendation and its source are kept alongside the translation.
Geographic differences
Advisories are location-specific. A species can carry different guidance in different lakes, river segments, or states, and states use different thresholds and formats. When you search by state and species we show the most restrictive applicable guidance found and list the waterbodies it came from. A waterbody-specific search is always more precise than a statewide one.
Sensitive populations
Most agencies publish separate guidance for children and for people who are or may become pregnant or are breastfeeding. Safer Catch preserves the population-group distinction from the source. Where guidance for a sensitive group is not available, we recommend following the more protective general advisory and consulting the responsible agency or a healthcare provider.
Contaminants are not interchangeable
Mercury binds to fish muscle and is not reduced by trimming, skinning, or normal cooking. Some persistent fat-associated contaminants (for example PCBs and dioxins) may be reduced by removing skin and visible fat and using cooking methods that let fat drain. PFAS are a distinct class of compounds and should not be assumed to behave like legacy fat-soluble contaminants; meal-frequency guidance is the primary tool. Safer Catch avoids numerical reduction claims unless a cited source supports them.
Review and updates
Update schedules vary by agency — some revise annually, some biennially, some only when new monitoring data warrants it. Records in Safer Catch carry the guide year or verification date supplied with the source when available. Records are reviewed as source advisories are updated; if a date shown here is older than the current official advisory, the official advisory governs.
Limitations
Safer Catch operates nationally, but its coverage is not uniform. The structured record set is deeper in some states than others; elsewhere Safer Catch identifies the responsible agency, retrieves that agency's advisory document, and reports only what the document states. Not every waterbody, species, or size class is covered by an official advisory, and unlisted does not mean untested or safe. Species profiles shown when no advisory record matches are general context, not location-specific guidance.
When information is unavailable or uncertain
Follow the responsible agency's general statewide advisory, choose smaller fish of lower-concern species, follow the most protective guidance for anyone in a sensitive group, and contact your state or tribal health agency. Safer Catch links to the official advisory wherever one is available.
Agencies behind the structured records
These are the agencies whose published guides have been normalized into Safer Catch's structured record set — not the full list of agencies Safer Catch can reach. Advisories for other jurisdictions are retrieved from the responsible agency's own advisory page at lookup time. Each entry links to the originating agency where a source URL is available.
Eat Safe Fish Guide - Southwest Michigan